The director-general of Ordnance Survey knows that the question won’t go away
It is reassuring to learn that the woman in charge of Britain’s maps has a decent sense of direction. A sailor and hiker, she never gets lost — well, hardly ever.
“I have a good sense of direction intuitively,” Vanessa Lawrence, the director-general of Ordnance Survey, says. “I don’t get lost in the countryside at all. I can navigate by the Sun and the stars.”
Once in a while, though, when she is navigating the corridors of Whitehall, she comes unstuck: “It’s normally when I’m rushing to a meeting and you think: ‘Well, where exactly is that road or that building?’